The U Ultra is HTC’s latest flagship smartphone. It has a 5.7-inch Quad HD display protected by the Corning® Gorilla® Glass 5 with curve edge. It will be running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 because 835 is exclusive to Samsung Galaxy S8. Meh. The U Ultra has a 4GB of RAM and a 64GB internal memory that can be increased with a microSD card of up to 2TB. It will be running on Android 7.0 and HTC Sense.

With these out of the way, let’s get down to what matter the most.

KEY FEATURES

The reason why the HTC U Ultra has a U in its name is because of U. We mean YOU. Everything they did for this phone is because of you at least to what their campaign is about.

Dual Display

There is a customisable secondary display at the top of the screen. You set it to display your email, contact, music, social media and etc. This gives you quick access to your daily essentials. Sounds familiar? LG came up with this idea first. Remember V20?

HTC USonic

The USonic is an awesome addition to the Ultra. It sends a sonar-like pulse into your inner ears and analysed them, then adapts to you. After analysing your inner ears, it can somehow adjust the music so that you won’t miss the details that you normally miss hearing from other phones. We know it is complicated. One thing easy to understand is that it also adapts your headset according to the surrounding noise levels. So if you are in a quiet place, it will optimise the level of your music accordingly so that it won’t be too loud.

What we are worried now is that if you are on a train, will it blast the music? We are not that worried that you will go deaf. But we are more concern for people around you to having to listen to your music choice. Just kidding!

3D Audio

The U Ultra has four microphones – two at the top and 2 at the bottom. These four high-sensitive omnidirectional mics can help video makers capture a 360-degree audio. It will make you feel like you are at wherever the video was taken. Reporters will love this.

Camera

This is the first time that a front-facing camera has a higher megapixel than the main camera at the back. The U Ultra has a 16MP and UltraPixel front camera. Your selfies will never look the same. You better have an application to cover your flaws. Again. Just kidding! They have Live makeup function. So you do not have to worry. 😉

The U Ultra has a 12MP UltraPixel back camera, which HTC says that it can shoot faster with less blur and can take better photos at night. It has a f/1.8 aperture, optical image stabilisation, laser focus and pro mode with manual control.

Videos can be shot in 4K and slow motion video can be captured in 720p at 120 fps. Very decent.

Battery

The U Ultra has an unremovable 3,000 mAh battery. One should be able to get through the day with normal usage. But HTC is never well-known for its battery life based on personal experience. The good thing is that it has Quick Charge 3.0 that can prove really handy only if you are near a charging source.

Headphone Jack

We mentioned earlier in another post that it is important to mention headphone jack. And the U Ultra has no headphone jack. It uses the USB port. See what we mean?

Verdict

We feel that the biggest innovation for HTC this time around is the HTC USonic. If it works well, then it will definitely help to delay the possibility of us going deaf in later years. For this, we are not kidding.

The overall specifications for the U Ultra are so-so. It’s not incredibly good and it’s not something that excites people. The cameras, though, are probably the tie-breaker. We also love the specifications for the camera.

Preorder or wait? The U Ultra will start shipping in mid-March. This means that you have all the time in the world to stay tuned to MWC 2017 and make the decision on your next phone.